


Storgê

by Runespoor



Category: DCU, DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Gen, Gotham Is Alive, Identity Issues, M/M, Other, Scary Bat God
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-22
Updated: 2011-03-22
Packaged: 2017-10-17 05:09:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/173235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Runespoor/pseuds/Runespoor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gotham loves Batman. Batman needs a Robin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Storgê

**Author's Note:**

> "Storgê" is Ancient Greek for “parental love”. The pretentious title is justified on grounds of the fic _terrifying me_.

Gotham has a bargain with Batman. Not so much of an agreement; it's nothing he wants to even acknowledge, much less agree to.

He's been forced to become aware of it, recently; the _patterns_. He's started fighting against them with the same grim, wordless determination he brings to every fight.

Gotham loves him for it, and she feels the same tenderness watching him struggle against her inevitable laws as she does, overlooking the minute schedules of nightly watches, the hurried footsteps of girls alone in the dark, the snickers of flocks of kids breaking apart, the muggers waiting from the shadows with their paw clutched over their gun.

She's a city for detectives, with as much a taste for patterns as he does – and the flair that _makes_ theatrics.

Batman is her favorite child, the one she spoils with her every riches. Part of it – half of it – is compensation, when she berates herself for neglecting him. Her first gift to him came early, when he was merely a child, but it's one she lavishes upon a number of her children; and she didn't think of concerning herself with him afterwards.

Possibly he resented her remissness.

He left.

For years he wasn't there, and she, who hadn't cared to know him well enough, didn't imagine she ought to miss his presence. He came back – soon enough, perhaps, but he came back different. A man. She cannot remake the past, but the question of who – what – he could have become if she'd taken better care of him during those years haunts her days.

It's never a regret. She loves who he has become – her son who came back as her lover.

He was lonely, she quickly unearthed. He was a little boy who was a man, two persons at once, and the weight threatened to pull him apart. He was lonely.

She provided him with playmates. They were meant to antagonize him, to reflect him, to complete him.

She loved him so much, for him she created a man; with a blank slate of a past to balance for her son's too-full story, with endless laughter so he might amuse her son, with a love more absolute for her son than she might ever be free to devote. When she was afraid he would misjudge how precious he was to her, she took one of his friends and divided him into someone that would relate to him, something for both sides of him. She thought of the furious capacity for love he only proved to her, and she arranged for a lady as alluring and dark as herself, groomed from her streets into a woman he could fight and fight for. She went out of her way to bring in an ally for him, a friend and a father he would stump and who would support him where the one he had couldn't tread.

It wasn't enough.

Gotham didn't expect him to induct a new player in their relation. She berated herself for not foreseeing it.

He was looking for more than what she'd picked for him. He wanted something _lasting_. Something that wasn't quite a son and wasn't quite a lover, and Gotham wanted to smile when he used the word _partner_.

She grew jealous. Robin made Batman happier than she ever did, and that was nothing; she would have been able to accept it.

She would have been able to accept that she only mattered to the boy through Batman, that she greeted him with her finest offering, attempted to make him _welcome_ , take him in as one of her own – _adopt_ him – and he blindly leaped into Batman's open shadow. She only catches the whiff of his flight, and it is enticing and pleasant, and she would perhaps have liked taking him for herself, if not for the fact that she would have forgotten about him, if not for Batman. She acknowledges the fact that he wouldn't have been as special to her as he is to Batman.

She can tolerate that this foreign-born boy longs more for Batman than for her. She's the same way.

She will never embrace the boy as fully as she wishes to, but she will keep on enjoying his flight for a longer time than she would have enjoyed devouring him. If not for Batman, she would have gobbled him down on that very first night. If not for Batman, he would have been the affair of a thoughtless snack, and then-- no more.

But Batman starts spending more time looking at the boy than looking out for her.

In the center of the legend, he is only a man – or a boy.

She grieves, but lets him assuage his needs. Lets him have Robin to assuage her own guilt, of years and decades she didn't notice the beautiful, exceptional child he was. She missed so much of his life, she was barely aware of what was growing inside her – inside him – at least she can do this for him, and hope Robin will light a spark there. Robin does something for Batman that she cannot.

Her body is concrete, standing over an entire island; her voice carries among her arteries, and the wind is mute to humans. Her soul resides in the walls of an asylum, and her skewered heart beats in the alley where Batman was born.

Even if she were not, she would still be unfit as the companion he desires. She loves him for all he is, Batman and Bruce Wayne and every breath in between, but parts of her hates him with the same passion.

Gotham can't deny herself, and-- gunshots aren't the kisses Batman is looking for.

He wants someone at his back, someone he will be able to rely on to help him unfailingly. And Gotham has to admit that she's as likely to save him as to damn him – has to admit she's as likely to pick the roses he leaves for his parents as the blood flowers she had bloom on his parents' chests – has to admit most days there isn't much of a difference. Sometimes it doesn't even take the flip of a coin.

And no matter _how_ she tells him she loves him, the idea of losing him is intolerable.

She gives him Robin.

And because the thought of losing his attention is as unbearable as the thought of him _dying_ – legends never die, but in the center he is only a man – she sets her rules.

Batman only comes to see them when they've started emerging as _patterns_ , and is is any wonder that she loves him as much she does?

Every other Robin turns out as perfect as Batman can want them to be. Gotham lets him raise them as undisputed geniuses at whatever they commit themselves to. She fills the cracks with her best intentions, takes the time to tame them, fondly, slowly. She missed little Bruce Wayne growing into _her boy_ , so she tries her best to make up for it for _his_ boys. Her presents to them are only the best kind, made of love and blood.

There is Batman between them, the Mission, the fact that they would have been good at whatever they did even if she hadn't been there. The fact that she only catches the whiff of their flight. The fact that she refrains from eating them.

They will never be as close as they could.

Every other Robin is _Gotham's_.

Birthed in Gotham, bled in Gotham, unable to leave and dying to stay.

Only Gotham and Batman have any right over them. They're the ones who, if they hadn't met with Batman, could have gone either way. They're the ones who see her looking at them and who grit their teeth and who never, ever feel foolish when they curse her because they know she exists as more than a name over a patch of land. They're the ones she bears for him to make. They're the ones who stumble out of her streets and into their Robin-flight between her buildings. They're the ones who aren't _allowed_ to leave.

If she could have it her way, no-one outside would ever see them.

They are from her to him.

They are the ones who have _bad things_ happen to them. She puts too much of her in them to take it kindly when he stops seeing her every time he looks at them. She loves them too much to let them get away.

He never forgives her for them, anymore than he forgives himself for giving them back to her.

Maybe that's the reason she loves Batman the best. An undisputed genius at what he does.

But forever, forever hers.


End file.
